Bead Sticks

We have a tub full of these lacing beads that come in lots of colors and shapes (balls, cubes and cylinders). I found them at a teacher supply store. You can also order them from Amazon here. The lacing strings were a little too tricky, so I came up with an alternative.

1. Grab some wooden skewers
2. Cut the pointy tip off
3. Wrap a lot of tape around the bottom so the beads wouldn't fall off (rubberbands wrapped around would work too).
4. Lace beads on the bead sticks!
5. My 3 and 1-year-old could do this themselves and loved it. The sturdy stick made it much easier to lace the beads. Highly recommended.

• You could also make a pattern on one stick, then see if they can copy your pattern on their own stick.